Parish Newsletter

Masses Today

11.00 Bridget & William Mulkerrins. (Anniv)
6.30 James Murphy & Mary Mitchell, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying......

Sixty years ago on Thursday next, January 27th, 1945, the troops of the Soviet 322nd infantry division walked through the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp, stumbling into a netherworld of ghostly, emaciated figures huddled together in dark barracks to prop one another up. This was Dante's Inferno realised horrifically. Up to 1.5 million people (Jews principally, but also Hungarians, Russians, Gypsies, and homosexual people) had perished there. Today, Auschwitz remains a haunted place. Evidence of the atrocities are everywhere to be found: rooms filled with the 'remains' of the dead - human hair, artificial limbs, combs, reading glasses, and 'convict' photographs of the inmates lining every wall. It is truly an evil pit and the pall of death hangs over everything there.

The inmates were, in the main, used for slave labour. But they were also used for medical experiments. The role of doctors - personified by Josef Mengele - and the perversion of medical science was horrific. Experiments with a dubious rationale, often designed to underpin pseudo-scientific racial theories, were inflicted on non-consenting persons - often infants - under the most crude circumstances.

Thus Auschwitz casts a shadow on the highest ideals and achievements of humanity as a whole. The aspiration for order and progress that produced bureaucracy and regulation were there directed towards the snuffing out of life. The desire for betterment that found its expression in industrial mass production was turned to barbaric ends. Medical science that was intended to improve the human condition, and was itself regulated by ethical codes, was perverted.

No war in human history has been so well documented as World War II. No act of war has been so intensely scrutinised as Auschwitz. Hollywood has played a central role in bringing the stark reality of these atrocities to the attention of the masses. We have no excuse for remaining in ignorance. Yet the heir to the British throne saw fit to wear a Nazi swastika to a 'Fancy Dress' party! Some joke! Is he representative of his fellow 20-year-olds? Or is he just a uniquely insensitive, ignorant lout? For the sake of humanity, I do hope the latter is the case. Because if Auschwitz has lost its horror, we are all in serious trouble.

- Dick Lyng.

EVENTS THIS WEEK

BITS & PIECES

MASS FOR TSUNAMI VICTIMS

On 26 January at 8pm Holy Mass will be offered for all who died as a result of the Asian Tsunami disaster at Galway Cathedral. The music for the Mass will be provided by the renowned Galway Baroque Singers (Director; Audrey Corbett - Organ; Raymond O'Donnell) who will sing a setting of the Requiem Mass by Gabriel Faure.

Fr Jude Fernandez who is studying at NUIG will speak of his experience returning to his native Sri Lanka and witnessing at first hand the total destruction of his home village. He will take this opportunity to express his personal gratitude to the people of Galway for their generosity in the wake of the disaster. It is hoped that members of Galway' s Asian community will join us for this time of prayer.

This event represents an opportunity for the people of Galway city and county to show their solidarity with the people of South East Asia. Having provided much by way of financial assistance this is also a way of showing another kind of support-the support of a community at prayer.

All are welcome to this Mass and it is hoped that many of Galway's people will come.

SNIPER

Moves in the rocks with inching fingers.
We among the feathery banana trees
Imagine for him his aim: the steel helmet
And English face filling the backsight' s V.
Again as it was last time, that spurting noise,
Thud, and the writhing figure in long grass.
until we match precision with precision:
We move ten men to one and have him then.

I saw the sniper in the afternoon. The rifle
Lay there beside him neatly like his shooting,
The grass twined all about his cap.
He had killed neatly but we had set
Ten men about him to write death in jags
Cutting and spoiling on his face and broken body.

-Bernard Gutteridge

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